Colleagues who are just fucking stupid

[Sebastian Cobb]

500 I reckon, mostly because 45 * 12 is about that.

[Bently Sheds]

A colleague took portraits of all the staff with her iPhone for the  company intranet. Asked why she didn't use the grands worth of photographic equipment in the studio, she replied that she wanted to use "filters".

All the portraits looked slightly off, so I asked her if there was a problem with the lens on her iPhone camera.
"No, because iPhone cameras don't have lenses" she replied.

She has a photography degree.

[Blue Jam]

500 I reckon, mostly because 45 * 12 is about that.

Bingo... and to think that several life scientists of the male persuasion, most with wives and girlfriends, couldn't figure that out...

[PlanktonSideburns]

Yes, but this thread is for colleagues, not pancreas

[a duncandisorderly]

Bingo... and to think that several life scientists of the male persuasion, most with wives and girlfriends, couldn't figure that out...

13 times something... & I'd've said closer to 400, given the ones that get missed, & that they start & stop closer to 35 years apart than 45.

[holyzombiejesus]

I'm a bit worried about one of my cases at work so asked some colleagues if one of them wouldn't mind reading the timeline to check I'd done what was necessary to safeguard the child in question. 'Oooh, pass it to A', they said. 'She's got a degree.' I left her with it only for her to come over to me and ask what jettisoned meant. Then I heard her colleagues reading out definitions that they'd got from doing online searches. Thing is, I had a dream at the weekend that this particular worker wanked me off so it's all got a bit weird.

A previous manager told me off for using the word 'albeit' in a report, stating 'I don't think teachers will have heard of that word if I haven't'.

[Dusty Substance]

I used to work with two monumental thickos. This was about ten years ago, I was 30 and they were both around 19 or 20, which is no excuse for their stupidity.

Girl thicko, who was actually a bit of a laugh when she wasn't being so stupid, once had to ask aloud "When you get decapitated, do you lose your head or your body?". It could actually quite make for an interesting philosophical question about the location of the soul or the id, but she blurted this question out as part of an investigation into a motorcycle crash where the biker had indeed lost his head (I was working in motor insurance at the time).

Boy thicko at the same job at the same time, who wasn't ever a laugh and had zero sense of irony or sarcasm, simply couldn't get his head round the concept of a fraction other than a half, quarter or eighth. I once spent the best part of two hours trying to explain what "one thirteenth" is and he kept arguing that it's the same as "thirteen percent".

Lee Evans fans, both of them.

[St_Eddie]

Boy thicko at the same job at the same time, who wasn't ever a laugh and had zero sense of irony or sarcasm, simply couldn't get his head round the concept of a fraction other than a half, quarter or eighth.

Well, they do say that smoking cannabis kills your brain cells.

[Blue Jam]

13 times something... & I'd've said closer to 400, given the ones that get missed, & that they start & stop closer to 35 years apart than 45.

Put it this way: it's more than 50 and fewer than 5,000...

[Kelvin]

Imagine!

_5,000?

I assume the answer is 500. Once a month, for 40ish years.

[Noonling]

Off the top of my head I can't actually thinking of any colleagues I'd call actually stupid. Some have surprising gaps in knowledge (like not knowing where India is on a map, or not knowing what a relatively common word means, or not knowing how to expand columns in Excel) but they are otherwise intelligent. Or at least not stupid.

I'd say more than anything most people I've worked with are incredibly incurious. They won't know anything about software other than what they've strictly been shown on their first day - they never click around and try to figure out other features. They only know the common way of doing things, and won't know what happens in special cases. They don't think to ring up/email another department to find something out something our team doesn't know. They won't think of updating a clearly crap template.

I guess its good for me as I'm always told how brilliant I am for what are essentially very basic tasks, but it just leaves me feeling awkward. Stop praising me.

[thraxx]

I have to work with many thick people, but one in particular recently occupied a very senior and responsible post. They were so dense, genuinely stupid, was barely, barely literate, I actually think they may have a mental problem.  Not only did they struggle to speak or form coherent sentences, they often failed to grasp basic premises.

I remember once they were chairing a large infrastructure meeting. I had been tasked with creating public bicycle parking shelters for a large event, which I had imaginatively titled A, B, C, D, E and F. So people knew which they had parked their bikes in. This person's face scrunched up "you'll need more letters than that, you'll need to go up to Z". Me: 'well we could create more spaces, but we don't need 26 of them'. Them: 'well where will people who's names start with the other letters park their bikes?'

I had to explain, several times, all the while trying not to humiliate this person, what the letters meant. But they didn't get it, we had to move on to avoid embarrassment, and laughter.

[Cuellar]

I assume the answer is 500. Once a month, for 40ish years.

Oh yeah I was working with 50 years but 50x12 isn't 5000 is it you utter fucking imbecile.

[Icehaven]

It's interesting, reading this thread, the different definitions of 'stupid', how for some it's liking generally popular things and not knowing about more esoteric popular culture, for others it's poor general knowledge and for others it's lacking common sense and thinking skills/logic etc. There's overlap of course though, I've worked with someone for a year now who, on the face of it, seems quite bright, has a law degree, reads broadsheets etc., but she's got astonishing gaps in her knowledge (didn't know NI was part of the UK but the rest of Ireland wasn't) and occasionally has massive lapses in common sense and critical thinking (blithely brings things to work she shouldn't) so I'm starting to think she might actually be a secret dimwit.

[Ambient Sheep]

Oh yeah I was working with 50 years but 50x12 isn't 5000 is it you utter fucking imbecile.

Also there are 13 lots of 28 days in a year, not 12, and the average ages for start & stop are 12 and 51.

So 13 x (51-12) = 507


(To be completely honest the 13 thing made me slap my head too once it was pointed out; my initial back-of-the-mental-fag-packet calculation was 12 x 40 = 480.)

[St_Eddie]

...she's got astonishing gaps in her knowledge (didn't know NI was part of the UK but the rest of Ireland wasn't) and occasionally has massive lapses in common sense and critical thinking (blithely brings things to work she shouldn't)...

Like what, her pet St. Bernard?  A homeless guy off the street?  Her collection of poos in tupperware?  The kitchen sink?

[Bently Sheds]

It's interesting, reading this thread, the different definitions of 'stupid'

The colleague I mentioned upthread is spectacularly dim when it comes to technical & practical work type things, but in the realms of cosmetics. fashion, fitness & local bars and restaurants her knowledge is impressively deep and nuanced.

[Icehaven]

Like what, her pet St. Bernard?  A homeless guy off the street?  Her collection of poos in tupperware?  The kitchen sink?

Well we work in a prison, so things we regularly carry outside and that are totally innocuous everywhere else are considered contraband and punishable with up to 2 years on the wrong side of the cell doors. It's easily done but not as many times as she's done it (and it's not that she's dodgy or anything either, each time she's literally opened her bag and gone "Oh bugger, I've bought my fags/mobile/a memory stick in again."

[Ambient Sheep]

I think the line of work is a major factor here. I met a lot of interesting people when I was working in call centres, because pretty much all of them were doing it as a stop-gap job while looking for a more long-term thing in their usual, more interesting line of work.

Now I'm back to being an academic science nerd most of my colleagues are of a similarly nerdy bent, and scientists they tend to be very sociable and chatty with lots of outside interests. Research centres always seems to have musicians about...

The thing is, both the places I mentioned were in the same line of work: we were all embedded software engineers.  Well the second place had some hardware guys too, but essentially the same thing: a room full of computer/electronics nerds.  Yet the difference was just stunning.

If I had to make a guess, it's that the first bunch were largely people who'd fallen into the career almost incidentally from other things (there being few relevant qualifications back then) whereas the second bunch were largely highly-educated in their chosen fields from the word go.

But even that's not a hard and fast rule given that one of the most fun people in the first job was the most highly-qualified there: a lady with a first in Computer Science from Imperial College London... so go figure.

Maybe it just came down to workplace culture and a subtle bias in the hiring process... I'm guessing I slipped through the net.

[Lost Oliver]

A colleague of mine genuinely thought it might be okay to put a microwave burger in the microwave inside the actual plastic packaging. He asked me just as his was on the way to the kitchen and only stopped when I told him it would be a bad idea.

And that colleague dear reader, was me.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Maybe it just came down to workplace culture and a subtle bias in the hiring process... I'm guessing I slipped through the net.

I'd say it's culture. I think the more process-driven a place is, the more it's going to look for people it can assimilate and turn into drones.

[thraxx]

Not a colleague but one of my pals, whilst not stupid, has some staggeringly stupid beliefs and will always angrily doggedly defend them when challenged.  I remember him proclaim and insist he was correct on the following in the face of all evidence:

Carrots grow on trees.
That Jimmy White had died in the 90s (we were watching him play snooker live on the TV at the time).
Every time a woman is angry, it means they have their period.

[St_Eddie]

Not a colleague but one of my pals, whilst not stupid...

Carrots grow on trees.
That Jimmy White had died in the 90s (we were watching him play snooker live on the TV at the time).
Every time a woman is angry, it means they have their period.

You're friend must be a rocket scientist if those beliefs alone don't classify him as a stupid person.

[thraxx]

You're friend must be a rocket scientist if those beliefs alone don't classify him as a stupid person.

Well other than stuff like these he's quite smart, far more successful than I.

[St_Eddie]

Well other than stuff like these he's quite smart, far more successful than I.

I'll take your word for it, I guess.  Although success is far from an indicator of intelligence, it must be said.  Just look at politicians, world leaders and CEOs the world over.

[The Boston Crab]

500 I reckon, mostly because 45 * 12 is about that.

Idiot. The average UK woman lifespan is 79.2 years, not 45.

[Sebastian Cobb]

(To be completely honest the 13 thing made me slap my head too once it was pointed out; my initial back-of-the-mental-fag-packet calculation was 12 x 40 = 480.)

Mine was largely based on the fact 15 is an easy number to multiply and although I know it's a bit too high, not too far off.

[kittens]

Off the top of my head I can't actually thinking of any colleagues I'd call actually stupid. Some have surprising gaps in knowledge (like not knowing where India is on a map, or not knowing what a relatively common word means, or not knowing how to expand columns in Excel) but they are otherwise intelligent. Or at least not stupid.

I'd say more than anything most people I've worked with are incredibly incurious. They won't know anything about software other than what they've strictly been shown on their first day - they never click around and try to figure out other features. They only know the common way of doing things, and won't know what happens in special cases. They don't think to ring up/email another department to find something out something our team doesn't know. They won't think of updating a clearly crap template.

this sounds like me at work. i'm not stupid (actually very very smart) but i'm also not willing to do very much more than the bare minimum. i will do things exactly how i was told to do things, so when something goes wrong i can always point to someone else. no use trying to innovate, i'm not going to get paid any more if i do

[Paul Calf]

You know when you fuck something up on a computer, like deleting all the text in a text field, you can undo it by pressing (usually)  Ctrl-z?

I once worked with two contract software testers who looked at me as though I were some sort of magician wheh I did that after accidentally deleting the contents of an Excel spreadsheet cell. They'd managed to work in software for years without learning about undo

For context: they were billing at least £250 a day, and probably much more.

[Sebastian Cobb]

You know when you fuck something up on a computer, like deleting all the text in a text field, you can undo it by pressing (usually)  Ctrl-z?

I once worked with two contract software testers who looked at me as though I were some sort of magician wheh I did that after accidentally deleting the contents of an Excel spreadsheet cell. They'd managed to work in software for years without learning about undo

For context: they were billing at least £250 a day, and probably much more.

Not quite that awful, but I've worked with plenty of developers who look at me like I've just performed an act of sorcery when I use a clipboard manager.